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The Indoor Kids tell stories of gaming with their parents, and read listener letters about their experiences. Ron Funches (Conan) drops in to talk about bonding with his 8 year old son through gaming, and to lament the lack of black protagonists in video games. (Yes, we know about Michael Jackson in Moonwalker.) Spoiler alert: He hates Barret in Final Fantasy 7.

I heard on the podcast that you were thinking about checking out flash games. You definitely should. Flash games get to do a lot of things that mainstream games don’t. It’s a bit overwhelming because there’s millions of flash game out there, a lot of which are awful. Here’s some ideas of where to start:

http://www.jayisgames.com- Now, full disclosure, I do write for this site occasionally, but please don’t think I’m trying to shill for the site. It’s been around since 2004 and covers the best of flash gaming, plus indie downloads and mobile games. Every December they do a Best of Year poll covering all the different genres, which might be a helpful place to start.

http://www.kongregate.com- One of the biggest flash game portals on the internet. Pretty much every flash game that gets made ends up on Kongregate eventually. You can browse through games by voter score and genre. You can also earn achievements by playing certain games. Games with achievements aren’t always great, but they’re usually a good indication that the game is worthwhile.

Just some of my favorite flash games:

Trader of Stories: Bell’s Heart ( http://www.gamesnitro.com/game/traderofstories/play.php )- The adventure game is still doing well in the world of flash and this is one of the best. Not too hard, absolutely gorgeous artwork and a nice story. The developers, Pastel Games, usually make very good stuff.

Pandemic 2 ( http://www.kongregate.com/games/DarkRealmStudios/pandemic-2 )- Independent game development means you can get games with crazy concepts. The Pandemic games are sims where you play a disease and try to wipe out the world. You get upgrade points to increase your lethality, transmitability and such.

Nate S! I have found the AI to be too overly helpful. That is my main criticism of the game right now. I go collect ammo, by the time I turned around, they’d already chainsawed half the bad guys. And, yes, I’ve only did once or twice so far, because they are too damn helpful. I actually turned the difficulty up after Act 1, because there was no challenge at all. This is all playing 2 player co-op with Emily. We played 4 player co-op for an hour and that was AMAZING. I wanna get through it to unlock the hardest difficulty level, and go through it 4 player co-op. That should be awesome.

And Shadows of the Damned and Vanquish were both Shinji Mikami?!? I can imagine that being very frustrating for you to listen to. Haha. I wanna get Vanquish bad now. Bayonetta was awesome. Impenetrable storyline though.

Am I the only one who’s disappointed in the AI? I’m playing solo to catch up to my buddies to do 4-player co-op, and I’m surprised no reviews mention how atrocious the AI is. Allies and enemies stand in the open at point blank range, and being “down and out” with 3 teammates to revive you means that in the first 2 Acts I’ve only died once, and that was because I spent the entire bleed-out time at AI Dom’s feet but it never stopped to revive me, instead letting an enemy AI come over and put me out of my misery after a good 20 seconds. I think playing 4-player should help with this.

Wow, great episode. This is definitely my “screaming at the stereo” episode, though. I’ve never wanted to be in the room at the same time as the podcasters I’m listening to as when you were talking about Vanquish and Shadows of the Damned. They were produced by the SAME GUY! Shinji Mikami did both, and is also involved in Platinum Games, which produced Bayonetta, which you’ve talked about lots before.

My mom and I used to play NES together. One New Year’s Eve, we decided to marathon and play Super Mario Brothers 3 all night. I think it was the coolest thing we ever did for New Year’s. We just went and got our junk food supplies and sat up til past midnight playing the game.

She’s not a big gamer anymore, but she will play the original NES when I pull it out.

My brother and I bonded through video games a TON through our whole lives though. We played through all the Tomb Raider games, and shared evenly turns at guiding Lara through the levels. We both had different strengths..one of us better at puzzles and one better at action scenes…but it really brought us together in teaming up to get through things.

I had been out of the gaming loop for a few years now because I had to sell my ps2 at one point and have felt like I don’t know what to play or to some extent, how to play given the new features and things. Bought a PS3 anyway and have had fun exploring new games. This podcast has been great for me, because I feel like I have some new ideas and I’ve heard about some games I love (Portal 2 and Limbo). Thanks for doing this!

I just saw Ron Funches do a set for the Eugene Mirman comedy festival here in Brooklyn! Definitely going to download this so I can hear more of his style of funny (which I like) and how it translates into a normal conversation rather than a bit.

I love the new Gears. Great multiplayer, great campaign so far, although I haven’t beaten it yet. Its not the most subtle game, and its certainly not the game you go to if you want to see videogames push narratives in any kind of new way, but as a big blockbuster game, its immensely satisfying. I’ll probably be playing it for a long time. The campaign, on its own, is worth the purchase money. The new Horde mode is awesome. And I haven’t even gotten to the Beast mode yet.

I think part of why some games don’t translate in sales well is because of the ability to rent. When I can pay $60 for Modern Warfare or Gears and play that for two years online, I’m not going to drop $60 on a game with a 15-20 hour campaign. I will go to Blockbuster and spend $8 instead.

I just watched this youtube video where a well known American StarCraft player (Sean “Day[9]” Plott) discusses his life with StarCraft and how it has been such an important thing for him. I thought that you two would enjoy the video if you possibly had 2 hours to kill because it is extremely sentimental and brings up how important his mother has been in supporting his StarCraft career. I realize that you both don’t know SC, but it is mostly about how important video games can be and how they can bring a family together. If you do watch it, I have to warn you that Emily may be saying “Awwwww” about every 5 minutes, and tears will eventually well into both of your eyes.

Also, if you do an eSports episode you should really try to get Sean Plott in on the cast. I do believe he lives in LA and has a career in commentary for eSports so he would be very natural in the podcast setting.

Thanks for including my email in this pod ! At least in M.C. deadly alliance, you can control how gory it can get so suffice to say I changed that setting before we played.
And @Karl, that’s the song alright.

I can really appreciate the different avenues you guys are taking in discussing how gaming can effect so many different types of people in a positive way. If this podcast was used primarily as a game or consoles review platform, I don’t think I would have listened very long. You guys get to the core of what it means to be a gamer and how it effects us in our lives. So thanks for that

Just finished it, another good episode.
Man I hate when my mom says “Turn that game off and come here.” When I’m in the middle of an online match or getting to an important plot point. She doesn’t understand but my dad does.

man Bubble Bobble was the shit when i was a kid. my godsister had it on her fat gameboy that she never played so it took me like a year to beat all 100 levels after forgetting so many passwords and starting over. hearing the music now just makes me so happy.